Super Bowl Fun – NFL Fan Map (FandomMap) created from Facebook data

Super Bowl week is here so that means more cool data visualizations.. best BBQ, tail gate hot spots, and those awesome NFL fan maps! Here’s details of a cool fan map – I’m not sure I can agree that its the best fan map “ever”, however, given that its been created by mashing up data scraped from facebook it is pretty cool! So how was this one done? Well, they used data… LOTS of it! Details… Facebook’s Data Science team has combed the more than 35 million users who have “liked” a team’s fan page, and put it into graphic form, down to the county level.

Some interesting spatial patterns emerge once you look at the data.. for example, Patriots fans tend to spread out far and wide, as do fans of the Cowboys and Steelers. Overall the data indicates that geography plays a huge role in defining the fan. Thanks to Deadsping for the map, and to my FB friend Brad Shannon from NOCO for tipping me off!